The all seeing, all knowing grand poobah’s which we affectionately call the Federal Reserve; have told us for years that they, and ONLY they know how to steer an economy to prosperity. Over the years they’ve hiked interest rates, cut interest rates, printed money, bought back Treasuries, “twisted”, QE’d and God only knows what else. So, how’d they do?

Good morning all, welcome back from the weekend. I hope it was a pleasant one for you all.

Yesterday was a marathon sort of day for us. My younger son has been working two jobs and saving his pennies for a long long time with the goal being to buy his first car. Well yesterday was the day, and of course the car he wanted couldn't be located here in town... nah that would be too easy. It had to be on the other side of the state! So we schlepped across Florida, and spent the day going through the ritual that is indeed buying a vehicle.

Today is jobs day, and heading into the delayed release the CNBC crew had the normal criminals on to discuss it all. Well, Zandi the bull of all bulls figured it could come in under 200K because of weather and oil jobs fading. Goolsby said 210. Rick Santelli said under 180

My schedule is a bit lumpy as you might imagine, but I'm free to make a few observations here this morning.

Yesterday the market put on a good show over the "prayer" that the Fed's will never do anything, ever. But the rise came as usual, on minuscule volume. We've seen that pattern for literally years now, where sell offs come on pretty large volume, but breakouts are on tiny volumes. So what's that mean actually? Well you'll get a lot of theories about it, but to us it simply means that we aren't breaking into new highs because "everyone" is in there buying with both hands....it means that the Central planners who need markets to be ever higher are buying the exact futures and the exact heavy weighted stocks that move the averages.

NOTE>>>> On Friday there will only be the morning updates, nothing in the afternoon. The wife and I are attending the funeral services of our neighbor Dave, who passed after a long battle of illness.

I laid out everything yesterday. The market is terribly weak and they're praying for a miracle. If you've noticed, the market is now lower than it was when Draghi announced his "all in" QE program. Evidently "good news" isn't having the carrying power it used to have.

Sometimes it is hard for me to keep my head buried in the place it is supposed to be, that being this thing we call economics and the financial structure. Why? Because each moment that passes is a new milestone for us. In other words, today we know more than we did yesterday. Tomorrow we will know more than we did today. Each day that goes on brings us new intelligence, new questions, new experiences. Sometimes the changes that are brought by these new events leads us to tremendous investing opportunities. Who wouldn't have wanted to be on the ground floor when Polaroid camera debuted its new technology? Who wouldn't have wanted to be an "Angel" investor in Johnson and Johnson back in 1885 when they were creating the first "ready to use" bandages? Who wouldn't have wanted to be the first investors in this new upstart called "MicroSoft" so many years ago?

I want to take a quick break from making any more 2015 predictions, so that we can talk about some “push back” I’ve been getting from a few folks. That’s GREAT because I love a good heated discussion, so let’s jump right in. Right now my view for 2015 is that we get one small rate hike of just one quarter of one point and NO new QE.

Unless you’re one of the 1%, you know things aren’t so hot. The economy is indeed surviving, but it’s artificial. The term “zombie” comes to mind, as it is being kept artificially alive. They’ve kept it afloat by a multitude of tricks and gimmicks, and most people forget just how persuasive the manipulations have become.

Over the past week, I’ve seen many folks make their 2015 predictions, and like usual they run the whole gambit of possibilities. In general, trying to predict events and outcomes for an entire year is futile at best, and frankly, stupid at worst. Even the best of the best are rarely more than 50% accurate. Yet we do it, because we get to look smart if indeed we get a few things right.

All that said, 2015 has the ability to be a monumental year. We could see events unfold that literally change the shape of the entire worlds Geo-politics. Notice I said “could see” and that’s because we’re going to be talking about very big-picture topics; the kind that don’t always evolve as you think they will, or even when you think they will. The problem before me is this…there are about a dozen topics we need to discuss, and all of them tie into each other. You simply cannot wrap up the worlds problems and solve them in one newsletter however. So obviously this is going to take a few issues to get through.

By now you probably know that the Fed's gave the market the green light to run back up. Yellen did a classic example of talking out of both sides of her mouth, mentioning rate hikes in 2015, but also saying the Fed will be data dependent and can be very "patient". It didn't matter that CAT has just announced their 25th month in a row of falling retail sales, or that Fedex missed the estimates despite billions in buy backs. No, nothing else matters other than zero interest rates and a happy Fed.